Donald Trump’s lawyers get serious on two fronts….

The media headlines have been blazing for the last 12 hours about how Trump’s mouth piece lawyer Rudy Giuliani has made a mistake by outing his client’s payment to Michael Cohen to ‘hush’ Stormy Daniels from revealing that she had sex with him and that begged fro more in his underwear….

We’ve seen before that something like this would result in the speaker being cut loose…..

Second of all?

It is no coincidence I think that Ty Cobb is leaving Trump’s legal defense team and veteran lawyer Emmett Floyd is now on board…..

Nor is it a coincidence that the Trump legal team gave the media THEIR idea of what Mueller’s people will want to ask Trump…..

There is a two part strategy at work here folks….

First of all?

Trump’s lawyers are working to manage their client….

A guy known to have a YUGE ego and not listen to reason….

The release of the questions HAD to get Trump’s attention in its volume and detail…

If Trump thought he was sit down for ten minute and freelance the Mueller Q & A?

THAT is over….

Trump’s lawyers one would guess have gotten his attention….

Second part?

In these cases it often is NOT the offense that gets a conviction….

It’s the lies to the cops….

Donald Trump didn’t just get a brain fart with Cohen yesterday….

Giuliani and his other lawyer’s know their client hasn’t been truthful in public….

They also know that Mueller’s people know that also….

So one could suspect that in near future that with Michael Cohen a step away from being charged by the US Attorney’s office in New York and under more pressure possibly by New York State’s AG that won’t be pardonable?

They work to get out conflicts that involve Cohen and take away some of Mueller’s leverage on Cohen….

Things ARE getting serious with the Mueller/Trump investiagtion….

The efforts by the House Intelligence Committee to sidetrack things was just a side show….

The Republicans who have Trump’s back are going to continue to try get Mueller and Rosenstein to send them information on their efforts so they can leak it to media and discount it…

The Senate committee is motoring along not going one way or another one would suspect being patient to see which way things go so they can come out on the winning side when this is over…

Donald Trump I believe WILL end up going before a Mueller Grand Jury….

That appearance will be without his lawyers in the room…

He will have to admit culpability in several actions that he has insisted he had none….

Trump has been there before in civil suits , where under questioning, he admitted he had lied about things said out loud…

This event will be anopening for Stormy Daniel’s case and other women after Trump civilly in cases that should continue to wind their ways thru the courts…Only Trump’s wife knows how she is being dragged thru the mud by a guy she knew was capable of these actions…

We are entering a new phase in the Donald Trump Special Counsel (Prosecutor) case….

Another person in agreement with my feeling that Rudy and Trump have NOT made a mistake ON COHEN’S part in admitting to Trump paying his bag man hush money….

It’s an effort to protect Cohen in their comments….

…

An expert in anti-corruption enforcement writes to Josh Marshall about Michael Cohen’s work for Donald Trump:

First, bribe money can be laundered from the “client” through the lawyer as fictitious legal services. The lawyer can issue bogus invoices to the client in amounts sufficient to cover bribe payments, a commission to the lawyer, and a gross-up for any taxes the lawyer would have to pay on the fee income (bagmen, after all, don’t want to be stuck paying taxes on amounts they pay out as bribes). Sound familiar?

Second, by disguising the bribes as payments for legal fees, businesses can try to write them off as expenses (bribes are not deductible). This is tax evasion, of course, but it is common practice for the corrupt. Third, the lawyer-client relationship can be an impediment to law enforcement. It can be very difficult for prosecutors to pierce what appears on the surface to be a legitimate attorney-client relationship.

So now we have Giuliani confirming that this is exactly how Trump and Cohen operated. Hush money to Stormy Daniels is one thing and certainly raises potential serious campaign finance violations, but she is not a public official. What I find most significant about Rudy’s admission is what it says about the nature of the relationship between Trump and Cohen and how it suggests an M.O. for other more serious crimes….More…

What Giuliani claimed on television seems like a pretty open and shut case that Trump violated campaign finance laws, which is what Kellyanne Conway’s husband is subtweeting today by providing the statute.

Giuliani also claimed that Trump fired Comey because Comey would not publicly clear him which sounds very much like an admission of Obstruction of Justice.

This all has to be fascinating to the Special Prosecutor and I cannot imagine the spin it would take to defend Giuliani’s tactics here, but again, if people don’t care, they don’t care. They didn’t care with Bill Clinton, by and large.

The bottom line is that Rudy really messed this up, and albeit they are only rumors, the talk that has gone around about him suffering from increasing cognitive problems should make us glad he was not picked to be Attorney General for the country.

(To his credit, he did provide stellar leadership for NYC after 9/11, but that was a while ago now)

I feel that time is clicking on the Mueller investigation.I realize such a statement won’t be popular here.

Yesterday ,a federal Judge questioned the scope of its inquiry.As CNN Leagal analyst Jeffrey Tobin noted ,that’s not good.Lets remember the focus of this investigation was Russian collusion.True ,its mission has been expanded with the concurrence of DOJ, but just because that happened doesn’t mean that the public will not tire of an interminable investigation that appears to have no end.

“Drip,drip ,drip”might be entertaining to some ,but the evidence suggests that the public, particularly those not overly attuned to politics, like those here ,grows more cynical as to the usefulness of these matters the longer they go on.

See,for example, the Bill Clinton saga which began as an “investigation “ of a land deal in Arkansas and culminated in an impeachment over falsehoods uttered in a civil lawsuit over a blowjob.The public eventually turned against the whole thing.It cost the Republicans in Congress, ended Newt Gingrichs Speakership( his political career never recovered) ,aborted Bob Livingston’s Speakership before it started, and ushered in the era of child molester Denny Hastert.

The same thing could happen to the Democrats on this Mueller investigation.These prosecutions of Manafort and now,apparently ,Cohen ,are peripheral to what this was all supposed to be about and that is Donald Trump and his possible “collusion” with Russia in the 2016 campaign.

I take a backseat to no one in my opposition to Trump, but the time is about up on this investigation ,maybe not as a legal matter but certainly as apolitical one ..Either they have something on Trump or they don’t.They need to make a move soon.

I don’t see this interminable matter dragging on and on as a political plus and,as in the case of Clinton, it has the potential to be an actual minus if the public concludes that either there is no there there or it takes on the aura of simple harassment.

If the conservative weren’t so hell bent on covering Trump’s ass they would telling the judge to shut the fuck up and
rule on the law….

The LAW is CLEARLY on Mueller’s side…
The base responsibility is for Mueller to investigate the possibility of Russian inteference in the 2016 election and ANY finding of criminality that might occur in that investigation…

For the judge to throw out Mnanaforts possible criminal actions would be like a prosecutor uncovering a murder and looking the other way…

REALLY Jack?

You are getting soft here…
Next you’ll be saying Mueller should just pack up and go home?

In the established history with Nixon and Clinton, which Mueller KNOWS and the judge forgot there is a clear right of a Special Prosecutor to do what every damn prosecutor does every day….Squeez one party too get to the next…
This is actually comical in its outright political angle….

Robert Mueller is going after his case pice by piece…
I do NOT embrace the concept that the President is the King and do NO WRONG, and that extends down to his subjects…

I am surprised that you would agree with the judges wondering away from the question of law….
I would have guessed that with your background you’d want a fair probe and accounting for those
who on face value seem as crooked as the day is long….

New learn new things everyday….

Oh, and your get it over soon?
Is probably the reason Trump WANTS to do the Q & A IN PERSON…..
Just to get it over soon…

Me?
I’m pushing Mueller investigations shelve life out LONGER….
I see him going on into next year with some of this stuff…
And THAT should scare the shit out of Republicans who probably will be the minority party in the House and maybe even the Senate…

Of course I knew that you would mischaracterize what I said.I never said I thought the Judge would rule against Mueller.Like Tobin ,I doubt that he will.I was simply noting his comments as indicative of what will be ,in my view, become an increasingly prevalent view among a substantial number of people in this country.

As we all know ,you have few ,if any fixed principles.Indeed I ( and likely others who won’t admit it) regard you as something of a political “groupie,” far more interested in the simple process of things rather than either the effect that such is having in the political world ,nor even the ultimate outcome.

As for me being “soft?”No, I’m just being realistic as to the political effect of this ever more monotonous “investigation.”In my view, the shenanigans of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen ,while of great interest to you and other anti Trumpers ,are having little,if any effect ,I among Trump supporters or for that matter a lot of those in the middle.

People are interested in Trump and his alleged Russian collusion .That is what this “investigation “ is supposed to be all about.

And as always I appreciate your lecture as to “judges.”Forty three years of practicing law makes me keenly aware of how much I have to learn from the likes of you.